Miyuki Kawanaka

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Miyuki Kawanaka" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Miyuki Kawanaka (川中 美幸, Kawanaka Miyuki, December 5, 1955) is a Japanese enka singer. Her singing career spanned over four decades. She married Katsuo Yamada in 1991.

Kawanaka was born Kimiko Kawanaka in Yonago, Tottori. At a young age, she moved to Suita, Osaka where she grew up.

In 1973, at age 18, she debuted as Kasuga Harumi and tried to become a pop idol with the release of the songs "Shinjuku Tenshin" and "Kantsubaki no Shima Kara". Both singles failed and she returned to Osaka to work at her mother's okonomiyaki restaurant.

In 1976, she won a contest singing "Anatani Inochi Gake". She adopted stage name Miyuki Kawanaka and launched her second debut as an enka singer. In 1980 Kawanaka's single Futarizake (ふたり酒) hit, with sales over a million copies.^[1]

Her second biggest hit, "Niren-sou" (二輪草) in 1998, which sold more than a million copies in Japan alone, spending 80 weeks in the top 100 of the oricon chart.

Kawanaka was invited to perform at the annual NHK Red and White Song Festival for 24 non-consecutive years, the 7th most on the all-time list for a female artist. Her last appearance at the prestigious programme was 2011, the 62nd edition of the show.

Original works charting in the top 100.

This article about a Japanese singer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e